


Thanatophobia

by sweetvillain



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Community: sherlockbbc_fic, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Phobias
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-07
Updated: 2011-01-07
Packaged: 2017-10-14 12:41:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/149338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetvillain/pseuds/sweetvillain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Some might say that Sherlock Holmes is a man without fear. They would be mostly right."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thanatophobia

**Author's Note:**

> A small ficlet written for a sherlockbbc_fic prompt about phobias. I gave Sherlock one of mine. Just be glad I didn't choose my fear of wasps (as much as I do relish the thought of Sherlock screaming like a teenage girl...)

Some might say that Sherlock Holmes is a man without fear. They would be mostly right. Sherlock has a supremely rational mind and things that he can categorise and analyse hold no fear for him.

Sherlock most certainly doesn't fear dying. Everybody dies. He looks at bodies in the mortuary, at crime scenes, in police files, and fails to be particularly moved in any way when all he sees are processes of decay and methods of murder.

What Sherlock does fear is that which he can not rationalise. He loathes himself for it - that his exceptional mind can not grasp the concept of its own ending. In a purely physical sense he knows how it happens, blood flow and chemical production ceasing and all those frantically firing synapses sputtering out for the final time.

He simply can't understand _being dead_. Sometimes he tries to imagine what it's like, that state of not-being. It doesn't take long to realise he doesn't know how, that perhaps it isn't even possible to imagine something that simply _isn't_. All he ever achieves is a horrifying impression of somehow being aware of a nothingness that lasts forever, being immersed in it with nothing to occupy his mind.

 

When Sherlock was fifteen he had to undergo anesthesia at the hospital, and even though it felt like he woke up only a moment later there was an awareness that time had passed in complete blank darkness. The immeasurable weight of nothingness pressed down on him and he tried to get up with a gasp, fighting the urge to flail and flounder against imagined drowning.

It took so long for the shock to wear off that eventually Mycroft was at his bedside, actually holding his hand that refused to stop trembling. It was another brick in the wall of animosity, that Mycroft had seen him so vulnerable and helpless.

 

It's easier when John is there. More often than not he stops Sherlock from drifting off on these tangents. Who cares what the Earth revolves around, Sherlock has found his centre of gravity.

There comes a day when he realises it doesn't bother him to have John know these things. He _wants_ John to know.

John doesn't laugh when Sherlock tells him, late one night over takeaway boxes in the half-dark of their living room. Nor does he ask stupid questions or offer useless advice. Eventually they get up from the sofa and turn off the tv, and Sherlock is both shocked and comforted when John hugs him tightly.

"It doesn't matter what happens after death, because in every imaginable scenario your friends will be there with you." John smiles when he says that but his eyes are serious, like he truly believes that even in non-existence they could still be side by side.

That is, of course, a patently ridiculous idea, and yet Sherlock tucks it away in his mind and it gets him through many sleepless nights and bleak days. The thought of nothingness never completely lets go, but he knows how to exorcise it now.


End file.
